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Comment by mrb | Hacker News Reader

When I go to ford.com and look at their basic truck, the 2023 Maverick, I see "starting at $22,195". So if a 1962 truck truly sold for $2000, the inflation seems to account for entirely the price increase. And I'm pretty sure everyone will agree a 2023 Maverick is superior to a 1962 F-100 in every conceivable aspect.

Housing and healthcare are better examples of goods or services whose prices have increased faster than CPI-U.

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In the 80s when I was a kid, we owned our own house, even though my father was a small time farmer and my mother stayed home raising us. We scraped by. In today's standards, it was a life of abject poverty. I knew a guy whose father ran a steel company (self made millionaire). Their house wasn't much bigger than ours, but they had VCR, microwave, CD players and satellite TV years before we did. But the real difference was that they had a new Mercedes and we had a low-end Ford that we drove until it fell apart. Our house build cost about 4x the price of the Ford. The Merc? I don't have exact figures but I think you could have built our house at least 2.5x times before you hit the price of a new Merc. These days that's totally flipped around. For the cost of building my parents house today, you could have at least 4x new Mercs.

In the 1920s it was cheaper to retain a servant full time than to own a car. Now it's completely the other way round, and for a car a million times better. Production of goods scales; anything labour-intensive does not, especially when land supply and usage are constrained by government regulation, and cost of labo[u]r is inflated by same.

I'd be surprised if you can get a truck at anywhere near MSRP these days. Trucks aren't a great example anyways because they're seen as a luxury good in the US today, which wasn't the case in the 60s.

Check the new car market again. Buyers have radically cut back as the economic uncertainty has proceeded since summer, plus the supply chain issues continue receding into the past.

> I'd be surprised if you can get a truck at anywhere near MSRP these days.

Europe, that's where. List price vs MSRP is not a mostly US issue honestly.

Idk..

First, you can't get the old vehicle new for cheap. That option is no longer available. You do get an objectively better one, but value is fundamentally subjective.

Marginal economics bridges this gap with consumer choice, but if no choice is available then I don't think you can assume consumers are better off.

In any case, I think inflation is a backwards lens through which to examine vehicle prices. The primary mover is industrial learning curves. Inflation is downstream.

In the 20s, when domestic car sales increased annually, the auto manufacturing industry was constantly growing. Factory efficiency increased every year and prices came down every year. The model T got cheaper every year, not just better.

Part of what caused the depression was this process maturing. Auto sales peaked. Manufacturing volume stopped growing. Efficiency stopped growing with it.

This breaks many financial assumptions/instruments and results in deflation, or rather, a local quanta of deflation. Growth industries can vary a lot of long term debt/equity/promises. Shifting from one state to another is deflationary/deleveraging.

Anyway, vehicles stopped getting cheaper 100 years ago. They get better/nicer gradually. Not cheaper though, ever.

Cars don’t break down as much and last much longer. A 20 year old car nowadays can still be perfectly usable. So in effectively they did get cheaper, just buy used (at least that was the case until 2020..)

I own a 21 year old car that still drives great. It's amazing honestly.

Same, also one that is 40 and one that is 60. There hasn’t really been an increase in reliability over time. The difference between manufacturers has always been the defining factor. Simply compare a new Nissan to a new Toyota and you’ll see what I mean. Project out resale value 10 years and you’ll see a dramatic drop in value for the less reliable one. It was cheaper to manufacture, used lower quality parts and engineering and the result is wildly different reliability.

The F-150 is the lowest cost full size pickup truck Ford makes. If you can't put full sheets of plywood and 2x4s in it, it's not really a pickup truck.

  How Much Does the Ford F-150 Cost?

  The 2022 Ford F-150 starts at $29,990, which is the lowest base price in the full-size pickup truck segment. However, that's for the three-seat Regular Cab, so if you're looking for more room, take note of the Super Cab's $34,075 base price and the SuperCrew's $37,700 MSRP.

Source: https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/ford/f-150

The nearest dealer to me had 17 of them ranging in price from USD$34k to USD$62k

The cheapest F-100 also had a short bed, so it wasn’t a real pickup truck either. You had a pay a whole $35 extra to get the long one!

It had a bed ~2 feet longer than the 2022 Maverick.

A 1962 Ford truck would only have a single row. Without the Maverick's second row, you'd probably get a full-sized bed.

The 2022 Maverick has an engine literally twice more powerful than the 1962 F-100 (270 vs 135 hp). With your logic, picking on one tech detail of many, I could argue the 1962 model is "not really a pickup truck" with such a puny engine of weak towing abilities !

What this shows is that Ford merely decided to trade 18 inches of pickup box space for a second row of seat, a more powerful engine, and many other higher-end specs. Today Ford could definitely make a 1962-spec'd pickup with a weak 135 hp engine at less than $20k.

The one tech detail chosen is pretty relevant to the economic (as opposed to style) use-case here.

Being able to carry a 4x8' sheet is the difference between a productive vehicle or not for a significant chunk of the contracting tradesman market.

Sure, lots of users want trucks for other reasons where a short box does fine or a second row of seat is the winning feature regardless of box space, but the logic being applied for a full size bed requirement isn't arbitrary.

Learn to use straps, really easy to haul a 4x8' in a short bed.

Noone wants a normal bed. They want a crew cab short bed. Supply and demand.

I want a full bed. As a result when I looked I was doing so in the past. Came close to buying a VW flatbed with a tools compartment built in. Thing was from the 60s.

short bed with straps: 1] load 4x8' 2] attach straps correctly 3] tighten straps 4*] re-attach straps if incorrect

long bed: 1] load 4x8' 2] close gate

As far as 'noone wants a normal bed', citation needed.

With regards to differentiating prices of products by category over time, this chart looks relevant: http://www.roseassociates.ca/20-years-of-price-changes-in-th...

"The Price of Tomorrow" by Jeff Booth really nails this concept.

I suspect that to an extent, prices rise with the proportion of income people are willing to allocate to something. Cars will rise to the amount that matches the importance people place on them. If cars become less important due to electric bikes and Zoom, manufacturers will be able to charge less. The investment in researching car design would decrease accordingly. Same with energy sources etc.

True, but only for goods with a moat. Let's say an iPhone. I may value a fruit at 10 Euros and you may sell me a fruit at that price, but if someone else can produce them for 2 Euros they will perhaps sell them for 5 Euros and make a good profit. So the price will be 5 or even less.

You should go to a dealer and try to actually get one for $22,195. Dealers have been gouging with huge fees above sticker / MSRP.

I’d prefer a brand new 62 f-150 to a 2023 maverick.

But yeah housing is a better example. We really fucked that one up didn’t we?

Healthcare is hard because we have so many better technologies, but worse outcomes so the price increase is arguably not worth it. Maybe this one is like the truck. Lotta new technology, at the end of the day not better.

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